7月19日，《中共中央、國務院關於促進民營經濟發展壯大的意見》釋出。“意見”從民營經濟的發展環境、政策支援、法治保障，以及促進民營經濟人士健康成長等八個方面，提出31條具體舉措，令社會各界尤其是民營企業家們歡欣鼓舞。

眾所周知，民營經濟為我國貢獻了50%以上的稅收、60%以上的GDP、70%以上的技術創新、80%以上的城鎮就業、90%以上的市場主體數量。而把人才作為重中之重，充分發揚企業家精神，努力吸引和培養人才，依靠人的想象力、創造力使供給創造需求成為可能。

作為家長和社會都有一個責任，要教會我們的孩子如何學習知識，而不是教給他們知識本身。古老的諺語說得好：“授人以魚不如授人以漁”。如果我們能教育孩子們成為企業家，尤其是那些有企業家天賦的孩子們，就像我們培養有科研天賦的孩子們成為科學家一樣，如果我們發現了那些有經商天賦的孩子們，並教會他們成為企業家，世界會怎樣？

今天分享的演講來自MIT創業專案客座教授——Cameron Herold在TED的演講，他在演講裡舉了很多例子，說明孩子可以在很小的時候就開始透過各種“社會實踐”活動了解商業規則、磨練商業技巧、培養企業家精神。

I would be willing to bet. I’m the dumbest guy in the room, because I couldn’t get through school; I struggled with school.

But I knew at a very early age that I loved money, I loved business and I loved this entrepreneurial thing. I was raised to be an entrepreneur.

What I’ve been really passionate about ever since — and I’ve never spoken about this ever, until now — so this is the first time anyone’s heard it, except my wife, three days ago.

She said, “What are you talking about?” I told her that I think we miss an opportunity to find these kids who have the entrepreneurial traits, and to groom them or show them that being an entrepreneur is actually a cool thing. It’s not something that is a bad thing and is vilified, which is what happens in a lot of society.

Kids, when we grow up, have dreams, and we have passions, and we have visions, and somehow we get those things crushed. We get told that we need to study harder or be more focused or get a tutor.

My parents got me a tutor in French, and I still suck in French. Two years ago, I was the highest-rated lecturer at MIT’s Entrepreneurial Master’s Program. It was a speaking event in front of groups of entrepreneurs from around the world. When I was in grade two, I won a citywide speaking competition, but nobody had ever said, “Hey, this kid’s a good speaker. He can’t focus, but he loves walking around and getting people energized.”

No one said, “Get him a coach in speaking.” They said, get me a tutor in what I suck at.

So as kids show these traits — and we need to start looking for them — I think we should be raising kids to be entrepreneurs instead of lawyers. Unfortunately, the school system is grooming this world to say, “Let’s be a lawyer,” or, “Let’s be a doctor.” We’re missing that opportunity, because no one ever says, “Hey, be an entrepreneur.”

Entrepreneurs are people — we have a lot of them in this room — who have ideas and passions or see these needs in the world and decide to stand up and do it. And we put everything on the line to make that stuff happen. We have the ability to get the groups of people around us that want to build that dream with us.

And I think if we could get kids to embrace the idea at a young age, of being entrepreneurial, we could change everything in the world that’s a problem today. Every problem out there, somebody has the idea for.

And as a young kid, nobody can say it can’t happen, because you’re too dumb to realize that you couldn’t figure it out. I think we have an obligation as parents and a society to start teaching our kids to fish instead of giving them the fish — the old parable: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

If we can teach our kids to be entrepreneurial, the ones that show the traits to be, like we teach the ones who have science gifts to go on in science, what if we saw the ones with entrepreneurial traits and taught them to be entrepreneurs? We could have these kids spreading businesses instead of waiting for government handouts.

What we do is teach our kids the things they shouldn’t do: don’t hit; don’t bite; don’t swear. Right now we teach our kids to go after really good jobs; the school system teaches them to go after things like being a doctor and being a lawyer and being an accountant and a dentist and a teacher and a pilot.

And the media says it’s really cool if we could go out and be a model or a singer or a sports hero like Luongo or Crosby. Our MBA programs do not teach kids to be entrepreneurs. The reason I avoided an MBA program, other than that I didn’t get into any, since I had a 61% average out of high school, then a 61% average at the only school in Canada that accepted me, Carlton, is that our MBA programs don’t teach kids to be entrepreneurs. They teach them to work in corporations.

So who’s starting these companies? It’s these random few people. Even in popular literature, the only book I’ve ever found — and this should be on all your reading lists — the only book I’ve ever found that makes the entrepreneur a hero is “Atlas Shrugged.” Everything else in the world looks at entrepreneurs and says we’re bad people.

I look at even my family. Both my grandfathers and my dad were entrepreneurs. My brother, sister and I, all three of us own companies as well. We all decided to start these things because it’s the only place we fit. We didn’t fit in normal work; we couldn’t work for somebody else, we’re stubborn and we have all these other traits. But kids could be entrepreneurs as well.

I’m a big part of a couple organizations called the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and the Young Presidents’ Organization. I just came back from speaking in Barcelona at the YPO global conference. And everyone I met over there who’s an entrepreneur struggled with school. I have 18 out of the 19 signs of attention deficit disorder diagnosed. So this thing right here is freaking me out.

It’s probably why I’m a bit panicked, other than all the caffeine I’ve had and the sugar. But this is really creepy for an entrepreneur. Attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder. Do you know that bipolar disorder is nicknamed the CEO disease? Ted Turner’s got it. Steve Jobs has it. All three of the founders of Netscape had it. I could go on and on Kids — you can see these signs in kids. And we’re giving them Ritalin and saying, “Don’t be an entrepreneurial type. Fit into this other system and try to become a student.”

Sorry, entrepreneurs aren’t students. We fast-track. We figure out the game. I stole essays. I cheated on exams. I hired kids to do my accounting assignments in university for 13 consecutive assignments.

But as an entrepreneur, you don’t do accounting, you hire accountants. So I just figured that out earlier. At least I can admit I cheated in university; most of you won’t. I’m also quoted — and I told the person who wrote the textbook — I’m now quoted in that exact same university textbook in every Canadian university and college studies — in managerial accounting, I’m chapter eight.

I open up chapter eight, talking about budgeting. I told the author, after they did my interview, that I cheated in that same course. She thought it was too funny to not include it. But kids, you can see these signs in them. The definition of entrepreneur is “a person who organizes, operates and assumes the risk of a business venture.”

That doesn’t mean you have to go to an MBA program, or that you have to get through school. It just means that those few things have to feel right in your gut. We’ve heard, “Is it nurture or is it nature?” Right? Is it thing one or thing two? What is it? Well, I don’t think it’s either. I think it can be both. I was groomed as an entrepreneur.

When I was growing up as a young kid, I had no choice, because I was taught at a very early age, when my dad realized I didn’t fit into everything else that was being taught to me in school, that he could teach me to figure out business at an early age. He groomed us, the three of us, to hate the thought of having a job and to love the fact of creating companies where we could employ other people.

My first business venture: I was seven years old, in Winnipeg. I was in my bedroom with one of those long extension cords, calling all the dry cleaners in Winnipeg to find out how much they’d pay me for coat hangers. And my mom came into the room and said, “Where are you going to get the hangers to sell to the dry cleaners?” And I said, “Let’s go look in the basement.”

We went down to the basement, and I opened up this cupboard. There was about 1,000 hangers that I’d collected, because, when I told her I was going out to play, I was going door to door in the neighborhood to collect hangers to put in the basement, because I saw her a few weeks before that — you could get paid, they used to pay two cents per coat hanger.

So I was like, well, there’s all kinds of hangers, so I’ll just go get them. I knew she wouldn’t want me to get them, so I just did it anyway. And I learned that you could actually negotiate with people. This one guy offered me three cents and I got him up to three and a half.

I even knew at seven years old that I could get a fractional percent of a cent, and people would pay it, because it multiplied up. At seven years old I figured it out I got three and a half cents for 1,000 hangers. I sold license plate protectors door to door.

My dad actually made me go find someone who would sell me them at wholesale. At nine years old, I walked around in the city of Sudbury selling license-plate protectors door to door. And I remember this one customer so vividly — I also did some other stuff with these clients, I sold newspapers, and he wouldn’t buy a newspaper from me, ever. But I was convinced I was going to get him to buy a license-plate protector. And he’s like, “We don’t need one.”

I said, “But you’ve got two cars.” Remember, I’m nine years old. I’m like, “You have two cars and they don’t have license-plate protectors. And this car has one license plate that’s all crumpled up.” He said, “That’s my wife’s car.”

I said, “Why don’t we test one on her car and see if it lasts longer?” So I knew there were two cars with two license plates on each. If I couldn’t sell all four, I could at least get one. I learned that at a young age I did comic book arbitrage. When I was about 10 years old, I sold comic books out of our cottage on Georgian Bay.

I would go biking up to the end of the beach, buy all the comics from the poor kids, then go back to the other end of the beach to sell them to the rich kids. It was obvious to me: buy low, sell high. You’ve got this demand over here that has money. Don’t try to sell to the poor kids; they don’t have cash. The rich people do. Obvious, right? It’s like a recession.

So there’s a recession. There’s still $13 trillion circulating in the US economy. Go get some of that. I learned that at a young age.

I also learned, don’t reveal your source: I got beat up after four weeks of this, because one of the rich kids found out where I was buying my comics, and didn’t like that he was paying more. I was forced to get a paper route at 10 years old. I didn’t want a paper route, but my dad said, “That’s your next business.” Not only did he get me one, but I had to get two. He wanted me to hire someone to deliver half the papers, which I did.

Then I realized: collecting tips is how you made all the money. So I’d collect tips and get payment. I would collect for the papers — he could just deliver them. Because then I realized I could make money. By this point, I was definitely not going to be an employee.

My dad owned an automotive and industrial repair shop. He had all these old automotive parts lying around. They had this old brass and copper. I asked what he did with it, and he said he just throws it out. I said, “Wouldn’t somebody pay for that?”

And he goes, “Maybe.”

Remember: at 10 years old, 34 years ago, I saw opportunity in this stuff, I saw there was money in garbage. And I collected it from the automotive shops in the area on my bicycle. Then my dad would drive me on Saturdays to a scrap metal recycler where I got paid. And I thought that was kind of cool.

Strangely enough, 30 years later, we’re building 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and making money off that, too.

I built these little pincushions when I was 11 years old in Cubs. We made these pincushions for our moms for Mother’s Day out of wooden clothespins — when we used to hang clothes on clotheslines outside. And you’d make these chairs. And I had these little pillows that I would sew up. And you could stuff pins in them.

Because people used to sew and they needed a pincushion. But I realized you had to have options, so I spray-painted a whole bunch of them brown, so when I went to the door, it wasn’t, “Do you want to buy one?” It was, “Which color would you like?”

I’m 10 years old; you’re not going to say no, especially if you have two options, the brown one or the clear one. So I learned that lesson at a young age. I learned that manual labor really sucks. Right, like cutting lawns is brutal.

But because I had to cut lawns all summer for all of our neighbors and get paid to do that, I realized that recurring revenue from one client is amazing, that if I land this client once, and every week I get paid by that person, that’s way better than trying to sell one clothespin thing to one person, because you can’t sell them more.

So I love that recurring revenue model. I started to learn at a young age. Remember, I was being groomed to do this. I was not allowed to have jobs. I would go to the golf course and caddy for people, but I realized there was this one hill on our golf course, the 13th hole, that had this huge hill, and people could never get their bags up it.

So I’d sit there in a lawn chair and carry for all the people who didn’t have caddies. I’d carry their golf bags to the top; they’d pay me a dollar, while my friends worked for hours hauling some guy’s bag around for 10 bucks. I’m like, “That’s stupid. You have to work for five hours. That doesn’t make sense.

Figure out a way to make more money faster. Every week, I’d go to the corner store and buy all these pops. Then I’d deliver them to these 70-year-old women playing bridge. They’d give me their orders for the following week. I’d deliver pop and charge twice. I had this captured market.

You didn’t need contracts, you just needed to have a supply and demand and this audience who bought into you. These women weren’t going to go to anybody else because they liked me, and I kind of figured it out. I went and got golf balls from golf courses. But everybody else was looking in the bush and looking in the ditches for golf balls. I’m like, screw that.

They’re in the pond. And nobody’s going into the pond. So I’d go into the ponds and crawl around and pick them up with my toes, just pick them up with both feet. You can’t do it onstage. You get the golf balls, throw them in your bathing suit trunks and when you’re done, you’ve got a couple hundred of them.

But the problem is, people didn’t want all the golf balls. So I just packaged them. I’m like 12, right? I packaged them up three ways. I had the Pinnacles, DDHs and the really cool ones. Those sold for two dollars each.

Then I had the good ones that didn’t look crappy: 50 cents each. And then I’d sell 50 at a time of all the crappy ones. And they could use those for practice balls. I sold sunglasses when I was in school, to all the kids in high school. This is what really kind of gets everybody hating you, because you’re trying to extract money from all your friends all the time.

But it paid the bills. So I sold lots and lots of sunglasses. Then when the school shut me down — they called me into the office and told me I couldn’t do it — I went to the gas stations and sold lots of them to the gas stations and had the gas stations sell them to their customers. That was cool because then, I had retail outlets. I think I was 14.

Then I paid my entire way through first year of university at Carlton by selling wineskins door to door. You know you can hold a 40-ounce bottle of rum and two bottles of coke in a wineskin? So what, right? But you know what? Stuff that down your shorts when you go to a football game, you can get booze in for free. Everybody bought them. Supply, demand, big opportunity. I also branded it, so I sold them for five times the normal cost.

It had our university logo on it. You know, we teach our kids and we buy them games, but why don’t we get them games, if they’re entrepreneurial kids, that nurture the traits you need to be entrepreneurs? Why don’t you teach them not to waste money?

I remember being told to walk out into the middle of a street in Banff, Alberta. I’d thrown a penny out in the street, and my dad said, “Go pick it up. I work too damn hard for my money. I’m not going to see you waste a penny.” I remember that lesson to this day.

Allowances teach kids the wrong habits. Allowances, by nature, are teaching kids to think about a job. An entrepreneur doesn’t expect a regular paycheck. Allowance is breeding kids at a young age to expect a regular paycheck.

That’s wrong, for me, if you want to raise entrepreneurs. What I do with my kids, nine and seven, is teach them to walk around the house and the yard, looking for stuff that needs to get done. Come and tell me what it is. Or I’ll say, “Here’s what I need done.” And then, you know what we do? We negotiate.

They go around looking for what it is, then we negotiate what they’ll get paid. They don’t have a regular check, but they have opportunities to find more stuff, and learn the skill of negotiating and of finding opportunities. You breed that kind of stuff. Each of my kids has two piggy banks. Fifty percent of all the money they earn goes in their house account, 50 percent goes in their toy account.

The toy account, they spend on whatever they want. The 50 percent in their house account, every six months, goes to the bank they walk up with me. Every year, all the money in the bank goes to their broker. Both my nine- and seven-year-olds have a stockbroker already.

I’m teaching them to force that savings habit. It drives me crazy that 30-year-olds are saying, “Maybe I’ll start contributing to my RSP now.” Shit, you’ve missed 25 years. You can teach those habits to young kids, when they don’t even feel the pain yet. Don’t read bedtime stories every night — maybe four nights of the week, and three nights, have them tell stories.

Why don’t you sit down with kids and give them four items, a red shirt, a blue tie, a kangaroo and a laptop, and have them tell a story about those four things? My kids do that all the time. It teaches them to sell, teaches them creativity, teaches them to think on their feet. Do that kind of stuff, have fun with it.

Get kids to stand up in front of groups and talk, even if it’s just in front of their friends, and do plays and have speeches. Those are entrepreneurial traits you want to be nurturing. Show kids what bad customers or bad employees look like. Show them grumpy employees.

When you see grumpy customer service, point it out. Say, “By the way, that guy is a crappy employee.” And say, “These are good ones.”

If you go into a restaurant and have bad customer service, show them what bad customer service looks like. We have all these lessons in front of us, but we don’t take those opportunities; we teach kids to get a tutor.

Imagine if you actually took all the kids’ junk in the house right now, all the toys they outgrew two years ago and said, “Why don’t we sell some of this on Craigslist and Kijiji?” And they actually sell it and learn how to find scammers when offers come in. They can come into your account or a sub account or whatever. But teach them how to fix the price, guess the price, pull up the photos.

Teach them how to do that kind of stuff and make money. Then 50 percent goes in their house account, 50 percent in their toy account. My kids love this stuff. Some of the entrepreneurial traits you’ve got to nurture in kids: attainment, tenacity, leadership, introspection, interdependence, values. All these traits, you can find in young kids, and you can help nurture them.

Look for that kind of stuff. There’s two traits I want you to also look out for that we don’t get out of their system. Don’t medicate kids for attention deficit disorder unless it is really, really freaking bad. The same with the whole things on mania and stress and depression, unless it is so clinically brutal, man Bipolar disorder is nicknamed “the CEO disease.”

When Steve Jurvetson, Jim Clark and Jim Barksdale have all got it, and they built Netscape — imagine if they were given Ritalin. We wouldn’t have that stuff, right? Al Gore really would have had to invented the Internet.

These are the skills we should be teaching in the classroom, as well as everything else. I’m not saying don’t get kids to want to be lawyers. But how about getting entrepreneurship to be ranked right up there with the rest of them? Because there’s huge opportunities in that.

I want to close with a quick video that was done by one of the companies I mentor. These guys, Grasshopper. It’s about kids. It’s about entrepreneurship. Hopefully, this inspires you to take what you’ve heard from me and do something with it to change the world.

“And you thought you could do anything?” You still can. Because a lot of what we consider impossible is easy to overcome. Because in case you haven’t noticed, we live in a place where one individual can make a difference. Want proof? Just look at the people who built our country: Our parents, grandparents, our aunts, uncles. They were immigrants, newcomers ready to make their mark. Maybe they came with very little or perhaps they didn’t own anything except for a single brilliant idea. These people were thinkers, doers, innovators until they came up with the name entrepreneurs. They change the way we think about what is possible.

They have a clear vision of how life can be better for all of us, even when times are tough. Right now, it’s hard to see when our view is cluttered with obstacles. But turbulence creates opportunities for success, achievement, and pushes us to discover new ways of doing things. So what opportunities will you go after and why? If you’re an entrepreneur you know that risk isn’t the reward. No. The rewards are driving innovation, changing people’s lives, creating jobs, fueling growth and making a better world.

Entrepreneurs are everywhere. They run small businesses that support our economy, design tools to help you stay connected with friends, family and colleagues. And they’re finding new ways of helping to solve society’s oldest problems. Do you know an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs can be anyone. Even you. So seize the opportunity to create the job you always wanted. Help heal the economy. Make a difference. Take your business to new heights, but most importantly, remember when you were a kid, when everything was within your reach, and then say to yourself quietly, but with determination: it still is.

Thank you very much for having me.

我之前從未說過這些，一直到今天。除了3天前我對我妻子說過這些話外，你們就是第一次聽到這些話的人了。因為那天她問我要演講的題目是什麼，我就告訴她，我認為我們喪失了一個大好的機會去挖掘一些具有企業家潛質的孩子，去打造他們或者展示給他們看：當一名企業家是很酷的一件事情，而不是一件招人詆譭的壞事。

挖掘具有潛質的孩子

當我們還是成長的孩子時，我們有夢想，也有自己所熱愛的事物和美好憧憬。但不知什麼原因，它們被漸漸抹滅掉，似乎不再為我們所擁有。取而代之的，是我們被教導要更努力學習，更專注一點或者多參加課外補習。

我的父母給我請了一個法語家教，但我的法語還是很爛。兩年前我有幸成為麻省理工學院創業碩士班裡面評價最高的講師。當時我要在來自世界各地的眾多企業家面前演講。

在大學二年級的時候，我贏得了一個市級的演講比賽，但沒人對我說過：“瞧，這個孩子演講得很不錯，很有潛力。雖然他注意力不集中，但他喜歡到處走動，激勵身邊的人”；也沒人說：“給他請一個演講的教練吧”；他們只會建議給我請一個家教來彌補我的不足之處。

所以孩子們展現了這些潛質，而我們要開始尋找這樣的孩子。

我們應該把孩子們培養成企業家而不是律師。但是很不幸，學校的教育體系都把大家的觀念訓練成固定的模式：做一名律師或者醫生。我們失去了一次機會，因為從未有人說過：“你要做一名企業家”。

一名合格的企業家應該是這樣的：一旦有了想法和熱情，或者看見了世界的需求，就會挺身而出，開始動手實踐。我們會想盡一切辦法來實現自己的想法，也會有能力吸引到和我們同樣的人加入進來，和我們一起實現夢想。

我想如果可以讓孩子們在小時候就萌生做企業家的想法，那麼現在世界上的很多問題都可以得到解決，只要出現問題，就會有人提出解決之道。作為一個孩子，沒有什麼事情是不可能完成的，只是你還不沒有一定的知識儲備，沒有足夠多的經驗去解決它們。

我認為作為家長和社會都要承擔起一個責任：要教會我們的孩子如何學習知識，而不是教給他們知識本身。

學校的教育告訴他們要立志成為醫生或是律師、會計師或是牙醫、教師或是飛行員；媒體則灌輸他們要成為模特、歌手或是成為像Sidney Crosby（加拿大職業冰球手）那樣的運動明星……我們的MBA教育並沒有教會孩子們如何成為企業家。

我之所以不去讀MBA——除了我不夠格這個事實之外（因為我高中平均成績只有61%，而這61%的平均成績在加拿大隻能上Carlton這樣的學校）；另一個原因則是我們的MBA課程並不教我們如何成為企業家，而是教學生如何進入大公司工作。

那麼又是誰創立了這些公司呢？是那些數量很少的企業家。

甚至在大眾書籍中，我能找到唯一的一本將企業家塑造成英雄式的人物的書——《阿特拉斯聳聳肩》（別名《地球顫慄》），其餘的則帶著有色眼鏡看待企業家。

注意力缺乏症的19種症狀中，我被診斷出18種，這很可能是我現在經常心亂的原因，當然，也有可能是我喝下的咖啡因和糖分在作怪。但注意力缺乏症和躁鬱症之類的東西會讓一個企業家覺得很恐怖，躁鬱症甚至還被戲稱為“CEO症”。Ted Turner（CNN創辦者）有此症狀，Steve Jobs（蘋果CEO）也有，網景公司的三個創辦人也都有此症……

你可以在孩子們的身上看到這些徵兆。企業家的定義是“組織並且運營一個商業活動，並承擔其所帶來的風險”。這並不代表你必須要去讀MBA，也不代表你一定要從學校畢業，這隻代表著，你在心中能夠正確地判斷事情的好壞與否，就足夠了。

我們也聽說過一個人的成長到底是天生的還是後天培養的，是前者還是後者？我覺得並不是兩者其一，而是兩者都有。

我絕對不會成為一名僱員

第一次做生意——賣晾衣架

在我還是個孩子的時候，我並沒有太多選擇。很小的時候，當我父親發現我不能夠很快適應那些在學校裡教導的東西時，他就開始教我如何做生意，他訓練了我們兄妹三個人，這讓我們討厭在別人手底下做事，讓我們憧憬著建立公司並且僱傭其他人。

我第一次做生意是在溫尼伯，那時我只有七歲。我當時躺在臥室的床上打著電話，我打給了溫尼伯所有的乾洗店，我想知道乾洗店願意付多少錢買我的晾衣架。

所以我想，有很多種晾衣架呀，我應該去收集一些衣架，雖然我知道她不想讓我去做這些事情，但我還是去做了，因此我還學會了和別人討價還價。

有個人付我3美分，但我和他談價談到了3美分半，甚至在我七歲的時候我就知道，我其實可以把1美分拆成更小的單位。當累計很多這樣的單位後，別人仍然可以付給我錢，每一千個衣架，我可以賺3分半。

9歲——賣車牌保護框

我還挨家挨戶地賣車牌保護框。我的爸爸更是讓我去批發市場，找那些願意賣這些東西給我的人。當我9歲時，我逛遍了Sudbury城，向那裡的人家挨家挨戶地賣車牌保護框。我記得很清楚有這麼一位顧客，因為我也賣給顧客們其他的東西，我有賣過報紙，但他從未向我買過一份報紙。

當我很有把握地覺得會說服他買下一個汽車牌照框時：

“我們不需要這個玩意。”

“但你有兩輛車呀，但它們都沒有汽車牌照。”

“我知道。”

“這輛車的牌照都已經破舊了。”

“是的，那是我妻子的車。”

“那不如我們在你妻子的車前面試一試我的這個，來看一下它會不會更耐用一些？”

於是我把2個車牌框各放了一個在那兩部車上。即使我不能賣4個，至少可以賣1個，這在我很小的時候就已經明白了。

10歲——賣漫畫書和送報紙

我也從漫畫書中收穫很多。10歲的時候，我在Georgian Bay的小屋外賣漫畫書。我踩著單車去到沙灘的盡頭，從那些窮小孩那裡買漫畫書，然後我會重新回到沙灘的另外一邊，把書賣給有錢的小孩。

很明顯，沒錯，低價買入，高價賣出。在這富人區，你會有很大市場的。但是不要嘗試賣書給窮小孩，因為他們沒有錢。但富小孩有，那就去賺他們一把。

需要提醒的是，千萬不要暴露你的入貨地點。在賺了4個星期後，我被揍得很慘，因為一個富小孩發現了我買漫畫書的地方，而他不想給這麼多錢。

10歲那年，我又去送報紙了，我爸說：“這會是你的下一門生意”，他讓我請一個人去送一半報紙，我照做了，意識到那些小費會變成收入的主要來源後，我開始去收集所有報紙訂戶的小費，而我請的人只是負責送報。因為不久後，我意識到，我可以從中賺錢。可見，我絕對不會成為一名僱員。

11歲——推銷針墊

人們過去總會自己縫小枕頭，而他們會需要針墊。但我所知道的是，你可以有選擇。實際上，我可以把它們都噴成棕色。然後，當我上門推銷的時候，我不是說：“您想買一個呢？”而是：“您想要哪種顏色呢？”因為我當時只有10歲，他們一般不會拒絕我。特別是他們可以有2種選擇：可以要棕色的或者無色的，我在很小的時候就有這樣的經驗。

我還知道，人力並不值錢，比如割草工作就很辛苦。但是不論如何，從同一個人身上得到長期收入，也算得上是件十分不錯的事情！

培養孩子的企業家特質

我們在教育我們的孩子時，會買幼教玩具。但是如果他們是將成為企業家的孩子，為什麼我們不給他們玩那些能夠培養他們企業家特質的遊戲呢？為什麼不教導他們別浪費錢呢？

我記得我在Alberta的Banff被趕出街道，因為我把一分錢扔在街上，然後我爸爸說：“把它撿起來。”他說：“這是我辛辛苦苦掙來的錢，我不會讓你浪費任何一分錢。”時至今日，我還記得這個教訓。

零用錢讓孩子養成壞習慣

零用錢讓孩子養成壞習慣，應教會孩子怎樣利用這些錢去賺到更多錢。企業家不會期望有一份常規的收入，零用錢讓孩子從小時候就只期待有份穩定的收入。對我來說，如果你想去培育企業家，給孩子零用錢是錯的。

我有三個分別是2歲，9歲和7歲的小孩。現在，我讓我的小孩在房子和前院四處檢視，尋找一些需要完成的工作，然後回來告訴我有什麼工作。或者我會跟他們說：“這是我需要完成的。”然後我們討價還價，他們閒逛去找有什麼可以做的，然後我們就會談定工作的酬勞，這樣子他們就不會有穩定的收入，反而有更多機會去尋找商機。同時，他們也從中學會了談判和尋找商機的技巧。你要培養他們這些習慣。

我的每個小孩都有2個小豬錢罐，掙來的或者別人給的錢一半都會存到他們的家庭錢罐裡面，另一半則存在他們買玩具的錢罐裡面。

他們可以用玩具錢罐裡的錢去買任何東西；另一個家庭錢罐，每6個月，就會存進銀行，他們會跟我一起去。

每年，銀行裡的錢都會交給他們的股票經紀人。我9歲和7歲的孩子都各有一個股票經紀人，但是我仍然要他們養成儲蓄的習慣。

如果到了30歲才說：“或許現在我想開始把錢存進我的創業支援計劃裡面。”那麼，我會瘋掉的，因為那時我已經浪費了25年，我必須在孩子還沒有金錢觀念的時候就教他們這些好習慣。

讓孩子來講故事

不要每天晚上給他們讀床邊故事。可以每星期有四天晚上給他們講故事，剩下的三晚讓他們來講故事。

嘗試一下，和孩子一起坐下來，並給他們4樣東西：一件紅襯衫、一條藍領帶、一隻袋鼠玩具和一臺手提電腦，然後讓他們圍繞這4樣東西講一個故事，我的孩子經常這樣做。這會訓練他們賣東西的技巧、訓練他們的創造力，訓練他們快速思考。試試看吧，你會有不同的感受。

教會孩子辨別是非和真假

當你看到糟糕的客服態度，要向他們指出說：“看，那人就是個很差的僱員。”然後說：“這些才是盡職盡責的”；如果你走進一間餐廳，受到了不好的服務，那就告訴孩子們不稱心的服務是怎樣的……其實我們隨時隨地都可以學到新東西，只是我們沒有利用好那些機會。相反，給孩子請家庭教師就是一種浪費機會的形式。

想象一下，如果你把孩子所有在家裡的垃圾和兩年前就已經過時了的玩具都拿出來，然後說：“為什麼我們不開始把這些東西在Craigslist和Kijiji上賣了呢？”，他們就會開始賣它們，並學到怎樣分辨收到的e-mail訂單的真假。

那些騙子會入侵你的賬戶、子賬戶或者其它的什麼東西。但是，要教他們怎樣定價、估價，怎樣放貨物的圖片，教他們諸如此類的東西並從中賺錢。然後他們得到的錢，一半存到他們的房子錢罐，另一半存到他們的玩具錢罐，我的小孩就很喜歡這樣的方式。

成就、堅韌、領導力、自我反省、互助、價值觀……這些企業家特質你都可以在小孩子身上找到，然後你可以針對這些特質對他們加以培養。

我們其實並不瞭解他們的世界，不要認為他們是多動症，就讓他們吃藥，除非他們的情況真的是非常嚴重，就好像我們對待躁鬱症、緊張和抑鬱一樣，除非情況嚴重到要進醫院，我們一般也不會吃藥。

躁鬱症，俗名叫CEO綜合症。因為Steve Jurvetson、Jim Clark和Jim Barksdale都得過這病，但是他們建立了Netscape，想象一下，如果他們吃了利他林（藥物），我們就不會有那東西用，Al Gore就真的成了發明因特網的人了。

這些技巧和其它一些要培養的特質都是我們應該在課堂上教授的。我不是說不要讓小孩成為律師，而是說怎樣讓企業家在人們心中，也能夠得到像其他職業一樣的評價標準，因為在這個領域有著大量的機會等待大家去挖掘。

企業家可以是任何人

最後我想說，我們其實生活在一個個人也可以做出巨大貢獻的世界裡，看到那些建設我們國家的人了嗎？那些人裡面有我們的父母、爺爺奶奶、叔叔阿姨們。他們可能是外來移民，來到這個陌生的地方，也許他們剛來的時候並沒有那麼富有，甚至身無分文。他們是思想家、實幹家、發明家，直到他們自己給自己命名為——企業家。

他們改變了我們對“可能”的想法。儘管當時的生活可能是艱難的，但他們清楚地知道該怎樣把我們所有人的生活變得更美好。現在，很難知道什麼時候我們的看法會被眼前的困難所擾亂，但是，混亂中蘊含著成功的機會，並督促我們去發現解決事情的新方法。

那麼，你會抓住什麼樣的機會，又為什麼抓住這樣的機會呢？

如果你是一個企業家，你知道所冒的危險不是回報。的確，回報是發動革新來改變人們的生活、創造就業機會、加速經濟增長，並創造一個更美好的世界。我們四周都有企業家，他們經營小生意來支援我們的經濟，設計工具來讓我們和世界各地的朋友、親人和同事保持聯絡。與此同時，他們正尋找新方法去解決社會上的老問題。

企業家可以是任何人！所以，抓住機會去創造一份你一直想要的工作，支援經濟、改變現狀，把你的事業建設到一個新的高度。

但是，最重要的是，要記得當你還是孩子的時候，當所有你想要的東西你都可以得到的那個時候，嘗試去在心底埋下一粒種並呵護它成長，直到它長成大樹，那個時候你就可以堅定地對自己說：“看吧，現在仍然是這樣！我的選擇沒有錯！”